S-T-R-E-T-C-H: practice tip no. 17

I arrived last night in Minneapolis from Sydney after almost a whole day sitting on planes or in airports and I rehearse later today for my Carnegie Hall concert on Thursday with the Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä. After travelling like that every bone and muscle becomes as tight as piano wire, and I love, in cities which offer it, to head as soon as I can to get a massage. The world's Chinatowns are the best option where shopfront parlours offer stretching, pummeling and prodding often for less than a dollar a minute … and often late into the evening.I wrote a year ago on this blog about some ways I warm up when there's no piano around – self-massage techniques; but the photo above shows a really good exercise for stretching the fingers when at the keyboard. I have adapted it from an exercise Adele Marcus was given by Josef Lhevinne. In her version the second group of five notes is a pure F major arpeggio but I prefer both groups having equal stretches for each finger – first a semitone, then a major third. It should be done with the same fingering in all keys, slowly, with fingers close to the keys. Its alternating expansion and contraction stops the hands getting strained and I even like the way it sounds.